


How to Free Your Dragon

by AithuzahFic (veritably_mad)



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - How to Train Your Dragon Fusion, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 11:00:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14447883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veritably_mad/pseuds/AithuzahFic
Summary: During an otherwise unremarkably miserable session of the Camelot Vikings' Pirate Training Program, Merlin and his hunting dragon Aithusa stumble into something even more dangerous than over-enthusiastic Viking recruits ambushing each other with swords and axes.





	How to Free Your Dragon

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be a fusion of both the How to Train Your Dragon movie and book series, with a much more ambitious plot planned for it than I was prepared to handle. I lost steam during the second chapter...about three years ago. Even though I still love the idea and want to continue it, realistically that big plot is just never going to happen. 
> 
> I _might_ try to at least finish up the second chapter with a somewhat satisfying ending. No promises though.

If the Barbaric Archipelago had a travel guide, the section devoted to the island of Camelot would read, _Avoid if you value dry feet, warm hands, and keeping your head attached to your shoulders,_ followed by a hurried sketch of a horde of massive, hairy men and women with swords and axes gripped in their meaty fists while they charged through knee-deep bog. The following pages would most likely be empty, or perhaps splattered with blood.

To put it mildly, the Viking tribe native to Camelot did not take kindly to intruders, especially ones that liked to read and write things down. Books and knowledge were considered highly dangerous, as they could encourage the risky business of _thinking_. All such nonsense was kept heavily guarded under the watchful eye of Geoffrey the Ghastly and accessed by Viking chiefs only in times of crises. The bush-browed old terror was more commonly known as the Hairy Scary Librarian.

Unfortunately for Merlin Emrys, son of Hunith the Hearty and Balinor the Bold, absolutely all of the characteristics considered desirable in a young Viking warrior had given him a miss. Instead of thick thighs, a thicker skull, and biceps like boulders, he’d sprouted up as an unremarkable, weedy boy with messy dark hair and about the same structural integrity as a dying sapling. Percival, one of the older and most promising Viking recruits, had been easily twice Merlin’s size at the tender age of fourteen. Now, with Merlin at fourteen and Percival at sixteen, Merlin felt dizzy just looking up to meet the older boy’s eyes.

Merlin, unlike almost any other Viking he’d ever met, _did_ value dry feet, warm hands, and keeping his head attached to his shoulders. He rather thought his head was the most important bit of him, but it seemed he was the only member of the Hairy Hooligans tribe to think so.

He also believed traits such as “basic survival instincts” and “common sense” were far more valuable than physical strength. It was as if the Brawny Viking Package sent to every child at birth to make them ruddy-cheeked and ham-fisted had gotten mixed up on its way to him. Instead, he’d received the Scrawny Runt Package, leaving him feeling a bit like a twig among boulders.

Given all this, Merlin might have grown up in uneventful gloom into life as a healer, like his grandfather Gaius, had his father not been the most famed dragon tamer in the archipelago before his heroically tragic death during a dragon nest raid when Merlin was six.

As it was, people _expected_ things from him.

The adults expected him to grow out of his silly weakling phase and become a master dragon tamer, like his father had been. (Some of them had more faith in this outcome than the rest.)

The other trainee Vikings, on the other hand, had a slightly different opinion on the matter of Merlin’s prospects.

“You want to put _Mer_ lin in _my_ group?” protested Arthur Pendragon, son of Chief Uther the Vast of the Hairy Hooligan tribe of Camelot. Or, as Merlin preferred to call him, Arthur the Arrogant, Arthur the Obnoxious, Arthur the Thinks-He’s-Better-Than-Everyone-Just-Because-He’s-the-Chief’s-Son, and other variations on the theme. “You’re setting us up for failure! This is sabotage!”

“Think of it as a challenge befitting a future chief,” Tom barked, “and quit whining!”

Arthur’s complaints died to an angry grumble as Tom continued assigning teams. Future chief or not, Tom was the head of the Pirate Training Program, and every trainee under his command had to do as he said or risk failing out of the course.

Merlin would have gladly failed himself on purpose to escape the miserable, life-threatening lessons, the taunts of his peers, and the soggy grey days spent slogging through marshes and learning how to hunt, steal, and kill, if not for one small thing: exile.

Failing out of the program meant failing out of the tribe. It was the Viking way: _Only the strong can belong._ And as much as Merlin hated training, he didn’t fancy his chances of survival exposed to the merciless elements and dragon-infested wilderness beyond the village.

Merlin sighed to himself as he shuffled toward Arthur’s group. He made sure to stand off to the side, out of range of any casual punches or elbows anyone might send his way, and stared longingly at Morgana’s troupe of trainees.

She stood straight-backed and sharp-eyed, somehow looking as lovely as the goddess Freyja even in the dripping dark of the woods, with her black braid twisting over one shoulder and her axe resting against the other. Its blade caught the dim remnants of light that filtered through the forest’s canopy in a silvery arc. Though she was older and a more experienced warrior than the other recruits, she still attended Tom’s lessons both to keep her own skills sharp and to protect and mentor the younger trainees. Even the ones as hopeless as Daegal, who had asthma and an allergy to reptiles, and was the only person worse at physical skills than Merlin.

Merlin thought he might be a little bit in love with her.

“Today’s lesson is strategy and stealth,” Tom announced. At its loudest, his voice could be heard an island away; at its quietest, it was still closer to a shout than a whisper. “When I blow the horn, each team will begin from a different location and attempt to track and ambush the other groups. If you’re caught, you’re out. First team out gets to clean the dragon pits for two weeks; last one in gets two weeks off from their chores. Questions?”

The trainees stayed silent. Asking questions was a sign of weakness.

“Good. Tristan, take your team east to the cliffs; Eira, west to the beach; Morgana, south towards the village; and Arthur, head up to the mountains. Now—” Tom cut himself off. “What do you want?” he snapped at Daegal, who had raised a shaky hand.  

“Are there—” Daegal’s face screwed up as he tried to figure out how to get an answer without asking a question. “I mean, I just want to be sure these woods were cleared of wild dragons before we started wandering around in them. Sir.”

“They raided them two days ago,” said Tom. His wide grin turned menacing. “But we can never be _sure_ the dragons are gone, can we? Better keep an eye out for more than your fellow trainees, laddie. Just in case.”

Daegal gulped. Merlin’s shoulders slumped. _Ohhh, suffering scallops,_ he thought. As if this whole day wasn’t bad enough already.

Tom returned his attention to the surrounding children. He thrust his fist into the air and bellowed, “Now get moving! _Death or glory!”_

“ _Death or glory!_ ” shouted the trainees.

_Death_ , thought Merlin gloomily.

The teams charged off in four separate directions. As soon as they were out of earshot of the rest, Arthur let his speed drop and he turned to boss his team about.

“Jonas, Kanen, you’re with me. _Useless_ back there—” he glared at Merlin, who was lagging behind the other three “—will find a place to hide and _stay put_ so he doesn’t ruin it for the rest of us. Got it?”

“Got it,” Merlin said. If hiding meant that nobody would be leaping at him from tree limbs, shouting and swinging swords over their heads, he was fine with it. Even if Arthur’s ridicule set his teeth on edge.

Kanen and Jonas shot sneering grins over their shoulders at him. Honestly, of all the people he could have been stuck with, it had to be the three biggest bullies on the island, didn’t it? Being on either Tristan or Eira’s teams would have at least been bearable, but he’d have loved to be in Morgana’s group. Gwen was always kind to everyone, and at least he could commiserate with Daegal, though Enmyria never seemed to stop glaring at him.

“We’ll send the hunting dragons out to find the other teams, and follow the first one that comes back. Approach with caution, and survey the situation…”

Merlin tuned out the battleplan. Snugged up against his belly was his own hunting dragon, an unusually small creature who was as warm and cozy tucked beneath his waistcoat as Merlin wished he could be at the moment. She was the smallest hunting dragon Merlin had ever seen. Arthur’s Monstrous Nightmare, Valiant, stood as high as the boy’s knee, and Merlin’s dragon stood as high as _Valiant’s_ knee.

Needless to say, the son of a famous dragon tamer choosing an egg from the roost that produced a wobbly white dragon that was not only tiny, but toothless to boot, provided a whole new source of entertainment for Arthur and his lot. Not that they had a shortage of things to tease Merlin about, but they accepted any fresh material with glee.

Ahead, Valiant loped alongside Arthur with lazy strides. He kept his wings tucked close to his sides, and his hide gleamed a deep, radiant ruby. Merlin could tell he was well-fed, and he bore none of the whip-scars that made Merlin’s jaw clench in anger when he saw them marring the sides of other Vikings’ dragons. Valiant didn’t have the faint cuff marks around his ankles or wings, either, and Merlin often wondered if Arthur even kept his dragon chained at night.

As much as he disliked Arthur—and Valiant, if it came to that—no one deserved the treatment Uther enforced. Merlin had a grudging appreciation for anyone who took care of their dragon.

Jonas and Kanen’s dragons, Balor and Devlin, flew above their heads, nipping and jostling each other in the air. The thick-bodied Gronckles weren’t as large as Valiant, but they had rough, rocky hides and jaws that could grind stone to rubble.

Arthur raised an arm to call a halt.

“We’ll wait here for the horn call,” he said. “Useless, take your little white lizard and—”

Arthur paused, realizing for the first time that Merlin was, apparently, alone. “You did remember to bring your dragon, didn’t you?” he asked scornfully. “Or couldn’t you find it? I’d imagine something that small is easy to lose.”

Merlin tutted and put his hands on his hips as though he were disappointed. “S’pose I shouldn’t be surprised, but I expected better from the _son of the chief_ ,” he said. “You really can’t see her?”

Arthur, Jonas, and Kanen narrowed their eyes at him in suspicion, but they looked around, tipping their heads back to peer into the branches above them and glaring at the soggy brush clinging to the sides of the tree trunks. Valiant, Balor, and Devlin tilted their heads at Merlin like they all knew he was lying. Merlin was grateful that the boys couldn’t understand dragons when they spoke.

“It’s amazing that something as rare as a Toothless Daydream egg got mixed up with the rest of the lot in the first place, after all. It was awfully lucky of me to end up with it,” Merlin continued. “Didn’t you know that they can be practically invisible when they want to be?”

There was, as Merlin very well knew, no such thing as a Toothless Daydream. In fact, the softly snuffling creature wrapped around his torso was an ordinary Common or Garden dragon who happened to have unusual coloring and no teeth, but he wasn’t about to let them know that.

Four years ago, when the pale, shimmery blue egg he’d selected from the roost had hatched into such a tiny dragon, he’d known that Chief Uther’s laws would demand the death of any hatchlings deemed too small, too weak, or too unruly. And if anyone could sympathize with the plight of being born too small and weak in a world that valued size and strength above all else, it was Merlin.  

So he’d lied. If someone challenged his claim about his dragon’s species, he asked them if they really thought his father, _the most famous and knowledgeable dragon expert in the archipelago_ , had been wrong when he’d told Merlin all about the rarest and most interesting dragon species he’d encountered.

People generally stopped asking questions after that.

Arthur tightened his lips, unable to decide whether Merlin was telling the truth or not. Two sets of blue eyes met, one pair slitted and assessing, the other wide and doing their best to look innocent.

“Fine,” Arthur said at last. “Take your ‘invisible dragon’ and find a place to stay out of our way until I send Valiant to fetch you.”

Merlin considered this a victory, albeit a small one, and grinned at him. “Don’t you worry about me! I’ll be as stealthy as—as a Toothless Daydream and a Night Fury _combined_. Can’t get much more out-of-the-way than that, eh?”

Arthur rolled his eyes as though he was talking to the biggest idiot on the island and was praying to Woden for patience.

_PAAAAAAAARRRRRP._

“That’s the horn,” Jonas said, completely unnecessarily.

Kanen gave Merlin a hard shove in the direction they’d been walking, knocking him off balance. Merlin staggered forward a few steps before the toe of his boot hooked on a root and he toppled into a patch of mud with a _schloop_. As he pushed himself to a sitting position, dreading the time he’d have to spend scrubbing cold, drying mud out of his clothes and off his skin, he felt stirring movement against his belly.

Kanen laughed. “Get moving. Some of us have a game to win, runt.”  

“Kanen! Come on, we need to beat my sister or I’ll never hear the end of it,” Arthur called, and Kanen aimed a parting kick at Merlin’s shin before he trotted off.

How Arthur could possibly be related to someone as perfect as Morgana was beyond Merlin’s comprehension. It was probably because they were half siblings, he supposed, but that was his only theory.

The boys and dragons disappeared into the forest, leaving Merlin sitting with his boots soaking wet and bum slowly growing numb in the mud. The dragon down his waistcoat wriggled around until a pair of silver claws gripped the throat of the old, red (and now mud-splattered) scarf he kept tied around his neck and hauled a slender body to the surface.

“Rise and shine,” Merlin said. “Finally ready to greet the day, are we, Aithusa?”

“No,” she grumbled in response. “Was d-d- _dreaming._ Why’d you w-wake me up?”

They were speaking Dragonese, the language native to all dragons. He’d seen the cloud-white scales against the chipped blue egg fragments all those years ago, and he’d named her _the light of the sun_ in her own tongue. He couldn’t tell that to anyone else, of course, so he’d claimed it was the word for a rare and deadly poisonous plant.

Dragonese had been forbidden to Vikings in order to protect them from dragons’ corruption and lies. Merlin, who had spent more time as a child babbling with his father’s dragons than with other children, had learned it before he knew he wasn’t supposed to know it, or what the word “evil” meant in his own language.

He sometimes wondered how long corruption took to set in. Would a person who’d been speaking a corrupting language since he was a baby be able to tell if he’d been corrupted? What did they mean by “corruption,” anyway?

Merlin didn’t think dragons lied any more or less than humans, either, though it did depend on the dragon. Morgana’s golden Mood-dragon, Sophia, turned a delicate shade of violet whenever she lied, and if asked her color, most people would probably say she was purple.

All in all, Merlin had stopped trusting his chief and tribe when it came to dragons a long time ago.

He wiped his hands on his front so he could scratch Aithusa under her chin in the spot she liked.

“Sorry. I fell over. Didn’t mean to wake you.”

She hummed in appreciation, her eyes slitting. “Forgive you.”

Merlin braced his palm against the trunk of the tree whose root he’d tripped over and staggered to his feet, dripping grime. He shook off the worst of it, but he figured more would come off on its own if he walked long enough. His shin ached where Kanen had kicked him; he expected he’d see the beginnings of a bruise if he pulled up his trouser leg.

Aithusa yawned, jaw stretching wide to reveal her sharp little gums and pink forked tongue, but she pushed herself into the air instead of going back to sleep. She circled his head once, looking around at the monotony of trees, before she settled at a hover near his shoulder.

“Where we g-g-going?”

“Good question. How about you pick a direction for us? Any way except that one,” Merlin said, waving a hand at the path the other boys had taken minutes before.

Aithusa snuffled in consideration. Dragons’ senses were far more powerful than those of humans; they could see better from farther away and in dimmer lighting, smell metal buried underground, and hear prey stirring in the marshes at great distances.

“This way,” she said, flitting between the trees and looping back to Merlin. “‘S a funny s-smell over there.”

“Well then, we should take a look, shouldn’t we?”

Aithusa led the way, keeping at a leisurely flap-flap- _glide_ that let her chatter at Merlin as he trailed along just a step or two behind her. They’d perfected this pace over their years together, exploring the island as a way of keeping out of the sight of bullies like Arthur and Valiant, who liked to call Aithusa a “white worm” and nip at her whenever she was nearby. This, of course, was the reason Merlin disliked Arthur’s dragon as well as disliking the boy himself.

Compared to other young Vikings, Merlin was left to his own devices for quite a few hours each day. He started the morning with his grandfather, learning the names of every herb that grew in the archipelago and helping him concoct healing remedies he hoped he’d never have to take. Knowing what went into them was too much information, to be honest, and he suspected they caused as many ailments as they claimed to cure.

Then, the Pirate Training Program filled his afternoons. It could either consist of fairly basic physical exercises and “diplomacy lessons” (read: loud, angry yelling) around the village, _or_ dangerous voyages over the stormy iron-grey seas in rickety boats they made themselves, _or_ dangerous excursions to other islands to risk life and limb against wild beasts and wilder Vikings for the sake of “real-world experience.”

The off-island trips often took a full day and left Merlin wet, frazzled, and checking himself for missing limbs and other injuries. (Near-fatal wounding only occurred once a week or so.) The rest of the lessons could be finished well before dinnertime. Afterwards, Merlin could run off to do whatever he pleased, which meant avoiding humans as much as—well, as much as humanly possible.

“Think we’ll run into anything?” Merlin asked, his voice hushed and a bit nervous. He preferred to avoid the deep woods after a raid. Shockingly, the wild dragons were wary, vengeful, and hostile toward humans after being brutally massacred by screaming Vikings, regardless of their typical natures.

Despite what his tribe thought, most of the dragon species native to the island considered humans too large and dangerous to be prey. Instead, they liked hunting fish, rabbits, deer, and other animals that didn’t have access to troublesome things like axes and spears.

Merlin felt fairly safe on a normal day in the forest, as long as he kept his distance and stayed quiet and unobtrusive. He’d spend long hours sitting cross-legged on hillsides, perched on low tree limbs, wedged between boulders, his notebook propped open on his knee, sketching each dragon species he saw and noting their habits in his messy, smudgy scrawl. As a result, he knew more about them than anyone else on the island—maybe even more than his father had.

Today was not a normal day.

This soon after a raid, most of the more peaceable dragons would have either been killed or chased off, leaving only the deadly survivors and their anger.

Aithusa puffed up her chest and spurted a thin flame to illuminate the shadows.

“Not to worry, M-merlin,” she chirped, “Aithusa will p-p-protect you.”

It was a lovely sentiment, but Aithusa could barely protect herself from the average dog, so Merlin didn’t fancy her chances against the likes of a Whispering Death, or a Deadly Nadder, or any of the other numerous dragon species with some variation of “dead” in its name.

Vikings tended to be more accurate than artistic when naming the things they intended to kill.

Just when Merlin was beginning to wonder how much longer this particular training activity would last, the thick, eye-watering stink of smoke assaulted his lungs.

“Eugh, is this what you meant by a ‘funny smell’?” he wheezed, tugging his scarf up to cover his nose and mouth.

Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to follow Aithusa’s nose. Smoke meant fire, and fire too often meant angry dragons.

“Yes,” Aithusa said. “Is a funny k-kind of smoke. Like b-b-burnt metal. And...s-something else.”

Burnt metal. That meant dragonfire against Viking shields and weapons.

“We must be getting close to one of the raid battle sites.”

Looking around more closely, Merlin could see the signs: the claw-gashed bark from a missed strike, patches of the carpet of fallen evergreen needles blackened and trampled, puddled mud holes from a Viking’s heavy tread.

The air seemed too still, even with the thin, misting rain finding its way down through slashed-open gaps in the treetops where dragons had burst into the sky to escape. Aithusa grew quiet and swooped back to land on Merlin’s shoulder, her claws pricking through his clothes and her tail curled lightly around his throat to keep herself balanced.

“D-don’t like this,” she mumbled into his ear. “Bad smell, b-b-bad smell. Not just smoke. Sh-shouldn’t be here.”

He should have turned back and gone the other direction, toward the area where the teams would be sneaking around and trying to jump out at each other. But maybe he was a bit like the rest of his tribe, after all.

Out of dreadful, morbid fascination, he ignored Aithusa’s warning and his own common sense. He kept walking as the burns grew more frequent and he had to step over branches that had been ripped from the trunk in the fight. The stinging smoke-scent took on an edge of nauseating putridity that made him press the cloth tighter over his face and take shallow breaths through his mouth.

Merlin hated it. He hated the birdcall-empty silence, the dying trees with splintered limbs, the lingering odor of battle. He hated that when he looked up, there were no Shortwing Squirrelserpents hanging from their green-brown striped tails in the branches as they searched for mice in the ferns, no Giant Bee-Eaters drifting over the tree line with their jaws gaping, no Cuckoo Dragons slyly slipping their eggs into a nest for some unsuspecting bird to care for instead.

The forest wasn’t meant to be like this.

When they reached the main site of the destruction, Merlin couldn’t help the sharp gasp that escaped him any more than he could keep his stomach from churning at the sight and reeking stink of it. Aithusa froze for a moment, and then she shoved his scarf aside so she could dive into his shirt and hide there against his chest, trembling. He wished he could do the same.

Dragon-hunting raids targeted hibernation grounds, nesting sites, and any other locations where a large concentration of dragons would be guaranteed. Hibernation grounds were usually caves found high in the cliffs. They were difficult to access, but if the warriors could enter without waking the dragons, they could kill hundreds of them as they slept with ease and without a single casualty on their side.

Nesting sites were more easily found and reached, but they were heavily guarded by the watchful, wary eyes of new parents protecting their eggs. During raids, the experienced warriors killed as many of the adult dragons as they could as a distraction while younger Vikings sought out clutches of eggs. If the eggs belonged to a valuable and trainable dragon species, they’d be taken and hurried back to the village roost to be raised in human care; if they came from any of the species that had been deemed useless or too dangerous to live, they would be destroyed.

Merlin knew all this, just as every member of the Hairy Hooligan tribe did, though he had never seen a raid or its aftermath before. He had known it in the way every child comes to know death as an idea meaning _the end of life_. It was horrible, but it was the way things were, and that was that.

Now, Merlin knew it in the way a child knows death when it happens to someone known and loved. He knew the reality of it.

He could tell that this place had been an ideal area for nesting. Boulders had avalanched from the cliff long ago, forming wide ledges and shallow caves that were sheltered from the worst of Camelot’s wind and rain—perfect hollows for their clutches of eggs. Adult dragons could easily keep watch on the forest from the overhang while staying mostly hidden themselves, letting them dive at any predators before the nests could be attacked.

While different dragon species didn’t always get along, suitable egg-laying environments could be hard to find. During the spring nesting season, they maintained an uneasy truce that let them live in close quarters until their young had hatched. Even so, squabbles still broke out and could end in violence.

A couple dragons clawing at each other over which one had claimed a ledge first could not have caused the ruin that had Aithusa shivering in Merlin’s shirt, her tiny heart beating hard enough for him to feel it against his skin.  

There had been no bodies on their path before, but here, mounds of broken and rotting dragon corpses littered the ground, staining the stone with dark green smears of blood. The eggs that had been huddled in careful mounds of gravel and pebbles had either been stolen away or smashed into pulpy, gooey messes by heavy hammers. Sweeping black scorches on the cliff face had reduced the clinging mosses and vines to ashes, and claw marks scarred the dirt and stone.

The fires had long been burnt out or smothered by the rain, but it seemed like the smoke had soaked into the ground, the trees, even the air itself. Worse than that, though, was the cloying stench of decay. Merlin hadn’t recognized the sickly odor infecting the burning smell before, but now it was all too obvious. All that blood, all those corpses left to rot in the open...

A low, gravelly growl jerked Merlin’s attention away from the horror. Aithusa started and squirmed to the surface as Merlin scanned the area for the source. Her quick eyes spotted it before he did.

“R-r- _run_ ,” she shrieked, and burst into the air, tugging at his shoulder so carelessly that he little claws hooked through the cloth and into his skin. Merlin stumbled back a pace at the pain. _That’ll bleed_ , he thought absentmindedly, too numb yet to move, still searching the cliff for the noise.

“Murderer,” hissed a dragon’s voice, low and shaking with fury. There, crawling around the curve of the cliff over boulders and broken bodies alike, was a Grimler Dragon.

Vikings liked to skin Grimlers and stretch their hides over shields. Besides being tough and fireproof, Grimler hides had deadly-sharp spines along their backs and tails. In battle, the Grimler shields could eviscerate human enemies as well as a sword.

Aithusa released Merlin’s shoulder and shoved at his chest, instead, her wings working furiously to keep up the pressure.

But a dragon’s eyes could be hypnotic, and the Grimler already had Merlin caught in its burning gaze as it crept closer. Merlin felt dizzy, the world blurring and narrowing to a red-orange point. The dragon’s words slipped into Merlin’s mind like a spell.

“ _Child-slayer. Egg-crusher. How dare they, how dare this one return? So small, so weak, so arrogant. Death to the human. Death to all humans_ —”

“Merlin!”Aithusa screamed as loudly as she could. She planted her paws on his nose and spread her wings in front of Merlin’s face to break the stare. He blinked and swayed as the fuzz cleared from his thoughts.

“Oh, suffering scallops,” he squeaked, realizing what had almost happened. What could _still_ happen if he didn’t run faster than he ever had before in his short, miserable life.

Aithusa whooped with relief as Merlin startled into movement. His boots slid in the mud for a terrifying second before he managed to throw himself in the direction opposite the deadly, enraged Grimler. He heard a roar and _scrape-crunch_ , but he didn’t look behind him. He left the image of the dragon launching itself into pursuit to his, frankly, all-too-vivid imagination.

_Grimlers Grimlers Grimlers,_ he thought frantically as he ran. He’d written a page or two about them in his book, but that was a while ago, what did it _say_ , _oh, for Thor’s sake, what did I write? What can I use?_

They like sleeping on pine needles, he remembered. Useless, useless. What else? Short-range fire blasts. Close-combat fighting style, making most use out of its claws and spikes. If he could keep ahead of it...he might survive slightly longer than if he just stopped now and accepted death. At least Aithusa could fly away while it ate him, but then what would happen to her? She could survive in the wild. Maybe. She definitely wouldn’t live if she returned to the village without hi—

_GRIMLERS._ He forced himself to focus. He had a head start, better maneuverability in the dense forest, and a horde of trainee Viking warriors to save him. If he could find them.

If he could make it far enough to find them.

Merlin had no idea where he was anymore. He was too consumed with not tripping on roots or running into tree branches to think of anything else. All he knew was that he hadn’t died yet, Aithusa was flying ahead of him, and he _could not_ , for the love of Woden, _fall._

He fell.


End file.
